Carman needs some love

June 19th, 2008 Uncategorized

For some time Carman, the car OBD-II analyser, had been incompatible with the OS2008 release of the maemo platform. Lots of noise and much anticipation was directed towards INDT to get it working with the new OS release and seemingly silently, with no fanfare, it is now available for download. After installing it I can see why.

Carman promises a lot. Plug a bluetooth device into your cars OBD-II port and Carman can show you fault codes, engine temps, engine loads, fuel status e.t.c. There is so much potential there especially with today’s energy conciousness. Carman could tell you your current mpg and optimal mpg/speed depending of past recorded data. It could show you the condition of your engine, again looking at past data. Maybe it could anticipate engine problems as it analyses certain sensors that show that it is getting progressively worse over time. Carman could be great but …

.. at the moment it needs a lot of love. I find that it has a hard time connecting to my OBD-II scanner, it crashes too oftern and some of the data it reports is inconsistent and way out from what is actually happening. Nokia and INDT should be pushing Carman, along with Canola and a Maemo Mapper integration as the ultimate ‘in car solution’. Instead, this little know and even less used application is seemingly being left to rot away.

Lets hope INDT have high hopes for it and are just not being public with their intentions yet. Maybe it’s time to put my Python hat on and spend some time on another project other than Entertainer?

Entertainer 0.1 Released

June 18th, 2008 Uncategorized

OK, its been a couple of days since the 0.1 release of entertainer and I purposely didn’t blog about it until now.

0.1 is a major milestone for the entertainer project. It may seem such an insignificant number but 0.1 signifies the projects intentions. It shows that we have a piece of software that we are happy to show the rest of the world. We know it’s a little ugly in parts, hell, even we are a little repulsed by parts of it but we know that with time and effort a swan can be made of this ugly duckling.

At this point in time, its a functional and pretty interface to your media. The plan is to make it even better!

Coming up in future releases:

And much much more.

Entertainer is an exciting up-and-coming project. Be part of it today.

Linux and AVCHD files

June 12th, 2008 Uncategorized

A new camcorder came my way today in the form of a Panasonic HDC-SD5. Its a great high definition (1920×1080i resolution) 3CCD camcorder that takes superb shots but like most other high-definition camcorders, it records to the AVCHD file format. For those that don’t know, AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) is a high-definition recording format used on the new generation of camcorders.

There doesn’t seem to be much support for this format yet. Mplayer came the closest. It tries but fails to play the file instead showing the image but badly corrupted. The only solution seems to be transcoding the video into some other format which isn’t ideal.

There’s a great tutorial on how to do this over on fsckin which you should definitely check out if you have one of these swanky type camcorders. The install script included didn’t work for me under Ubuntu Hardy so I had to do it by hand (just look at what the Makefile does) but transcoding is now possible.

Lets hope the mainstream Linux video players and editors begin to support this format soon, that way transcoding won’t be needed.

More Entertainer Development

June 10th, 2008 Uncategorized

The development towards a 0.1 release of Entertainer is hotting up. Lots of bugs are being squished and final touches are being applied.

One of these final touches for me what adding a weather forecasting module. The first phase of this implementation was completed nearly two weeks ago. Last night saw the graphics being added. Below you can see what it looks like now.

There’s still a little work to do on adding a configure option for Fahrenheit as well as Celsius but its good to go for the first release.

I squashed a couple of other bugs but it seems that Josh is running away with it in the Entertainer karma stakes

Hopefully by the end of the week we will have an Ubuntu ppa package available for download as well as packaging for more distro’s if possible.

Iron Man

June 4th, 2008 Uncategorized

I’m not going to give an in-depth review of this movie, it’s been done to death at other places but I will give my take. Lets get this out of the way at the start, I enjoyed the movie but …

… it could of been a whole lot more. It had so much promise and the reviews I read (which always end up being the kiss of death) hyped it up beyond belief. I sat in the cinema expecting a lot, what I got was a good film but ultimately I left a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, Iron Man is one of this years blockbuster films to see but it didn’t wow me.

Gwyneth Paltrow was one of the success stories of the movie, she was simply sexy through-out and Robert Downey Jr was a perfect Tony Stark but it was the story that let this movie down. As with nearly all first movies in a franchise, this one had to give a back story before all the meat could be portrayed. Unfortunately this led to a lull around the 60 minute mark that seemed to drag on for around 20 minutes. Not a big deal but the bench mark for first movie’s (even though the rest were terrible) has to be the Matrix. This first movie completely blew you away. It introduced the world, told a story and ended with the viewer wanting more. I was hoping Iron Man could stand up to this and although it wasn’t quite there, it was not too far off.

I’ve been an Iron Man reader since a kid and have some of the very first comic books sat here right next to me (I really should ebay all these old comic’s!). When I first saw that Iron Man was going to be made into a film I must admit, I was a little sceptical. After seeing the movie though, it is plain to see that the franchise has a lot of potential. With rumours of Captain America appearing in the second movie (his shield spotted in the the movie) and a a possible tie in with the Hulk and Superman, the Marvel guys (and gal’s) are really giving us something to truly be thankful of.